We completed our final Watershed Advisory Group (WAG) meeting on April 5, 2017, which also marks the conclusion of Phase II of Our Green/Duwamish. Since 2014, we have made progress towards improving the environment and health of the Green/Duwamish watershed. With help and collaboration from the WAG we have:

built and strengthened partnerships among the many stakeholders working in the watershed;

documented a strong baseline of information about the air, land and water conditions in the watershed;

improved coordination of the substantial number of projects and programs underway in the watershed;

identified areas where more work is needed;

proposed strategies to address these priority areas; and

enhanced our collective sense of watershed identity.

Thank you to the WAG and all of the participants in helping to make this project a success.

If you have any news or updates related to the Green/Duwamish watershed or this project that you’d like posted on this blog, please send the information to: Logan Harris, Communications Manager, King County Department of Natural Resources & Parks (DNRP).

Below we have our final products for this project, as well as, lead contacts for the four Phase II focus areas.

We are close to concluding Phase II of Our Green/Duwamish which kicked off in January 2016, where the Watershed Advisory Group identified four focus areas that could use additional effort to help improve watershed conditions.

The greatest level of effort during Phase II was focused on defining values and priorities for a watershed-wide approach to stormwater management which culminated in a Watershed- wide Stormwater Strategy. View the report and appendices at the links below:

On September 15, 2016 we held the last in a series of three workshops to develop an action plan for the Green/Duwamish Watershed-Wide Stormwater Strategy. We had over 40 participants representing community groups, nonprofits, government agencies and businesses.

Together, we looked at potential prioritization criteria for actions and we refined stormwater management actions from workshop #2. We also had a great discussion about the important attributes of a coalition or organizational structure to carry on the watershed-wide stormwater strategy.

On June 28, 2016 Our Green/Duwamish held the second in a series of three workshops to create an action plan for a watershed-wide stormwater strategy in the Green/Duwamish Watershed. We had over thirty participants from different government agencies, community groups and businesses.

We had a great conversation about the vision, mission and goals for the stormwater strategy and developed potential actions that could achieve the draft vision. Thank you to all the participants and check out these photos from the workshop!

And be sure to join us at our next watershed-wide Stormwater Strategy meeting set for Tuesday, June 28, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Green River College Kent Campus, located at 417 Ramsay Way #112, in Kent.

On May 19, 2016, we held the fourth WAG meeting to discuss the King County Land Conservation and Preservation Work Plan (Work Plan) which proposes implementing a land preservation and conservation program to identify, protect and conserve water and land resources. We worked with the WAG to determine if this County project meets the Our Green/Duwamish interest of developing a watershed-wide open space action strategy. The WAG determined it fulfills the purpose of a watershed-wide open space strategy.

They recommended that the Work Plan could be improved with the following additional analysis and engagement:

On May 4, Our Green/Duwamish kicked off the development of a watershed-wide stormwater strategy with the first of three workshops. Nearly 50 people took part in this exciting and productive session, representing many different sectors including government, business and industry, and community and environmental groups.

In addition to presentations on stormwater management, group discussions centered on what’s being done now, and identified gaps and opportunities for improvement. People also shared their vision for stormwater management in the watershed, and note takers recorded this input.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If you missed the first workshop, presentations from the meeting can be viewed at the links below:

The first Green/Duwamish Watershed Symposium was held on February 29, 2016. This symposium was aimed at fostering collaboration, building partnerships and sharing knowledge about all of the great work that is occurring in the watershed. Many of the presentations are shown in the videos below! More information about the presentations can be found here: http://www.greenduwamishwatershedsymposium.org/panel-one-sharing-knowledge.html